Science Poetry Competition winners and finalists

WORD Christchurch

Congratulations to Abby Mason for her winning work ‘Newton’s Third Law’ and to all for participating. All 42 entries truly showed that “science is the poetry of reality”.

Winner

Abby Mason for ‘Newton’s Third Law’

when i drove to your house
you saidtake me somewhere

you didn’t want to talk about your dadhe wasn’t worth talking abouteverything you did, set him off.

There was silence, apart from
the grounding of tires
against the dusty road.

It was hard to see straight,
in the dark, on the coast,
with the moondistancing itself,
making the waves drowsy.

The only light was tiny balls of gas in the sky
and because I took my hand
off the wheel to hold yoursI didn’t see the truckor the ditchor the stars,as we flipped.

Judge Helen Heath says: Newton’s third law says: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”. A force is a push or a pull that acts upon an object as a result of its interaction with another object. Forces result from interactions. In this poem, Abby cleverly applies this law of physics as a metaphor for the relationship between her friend and the friend’s father; but also the mechanics of a car crash. What made Abby’s poem stand out, apart from her use of scientific knowledge, was her light touch describing the night drive and her adept use of language. This poem demonstrates confidence not only with understanding and communicating scientific concepts but with subtleties of language, pace and imagery. It reminded me of the great UK science poet — Lavinia Greenlaw’s work.

Highly Commended

Mia Sutherland for ‘Beneath the Crust’

Under the earth
the tectonic plates shudder with joy
as they brush one another.

Convection currents curling like the
marble cake mum made in the oven
which is 33.333 times less hot than
the core of the earth– or what they say it is.

Imagine if there were great iron hot
elephants under our surface?You heard me.

Loxodonta with igneous hides
melting and reforming and cooling andmelting again, constantly shedding a new coat.

They walk on the crustupside down from us.
And when the bull elephants thrust their
granite tusks together
chip the shoulders blades of one another
pierce through warm, soft rock tomolten blood
one of them falls,

It can be felt on the other side
as the earth shakes
and others fall elsewhere.

Calves squirt magma through the
coulees they findand it erupts through what we callvolcanoes.

Our mountains are their valleys they’ve
formed through trampling the tough ground

Our ravines are results of their staple dietof rock and sediment.

And mum’s marble cake keeps rising
at 180℃ in the oven.

Judge Helen Heath says: This poem employs a fun combination of scientific facts with a highly imaginative mythology, placing them alongside a familiar, domestic, setting to great effect.

Highly Commended

Stephanie Lester for ‘A Dress to Wear in the Lab’

Thumb propped on a test tube,You stand on the bow,Of the ship you builtfrom dolls and skipping ropes

Hand in hand,You walk ahead of footprints,Carving your own sculptureTwo hearts at a time

Sketching numbers into sentencesAnd those into meaningThe hard backed chairOne test tube in a drawer

The third is motor function.
Limbs stiffen, eyes flutter, the body shudders.
Death-throes, last desperate jerks screaming for oxygen,
(elemental, not carbonyl, for it was carbon that brought us here)
and maybe the eyes sparkle as they blink,
pleading against the choking hands.

The fourth is sense.
Last sights should be special as last words, but I don’t think there’s anything to see but fire,
and nothing to feel but heat.
Then comes the blinding, the deafening, the choking
it’s always choking in the end.

The fifth is the respiratory system
lungs last the longest but even they die (why must all good things end?)
once they’ve choked for long enough.
That’s what it comes to in the end,
once breath is spent and swallowing stops,
choking, dying smothered.
Life becomes a rock among the stars.

Judge Helen Heath says: I loved the way this dark poem maintained a cool, logical voice while describing a frightening death. Eerie!

Finalists:

Alex Wilson for ‘Planting the Seed of the Solar System’
Elly Fraser for ‘H and H’
Emily Koller for ‘We Are All Made Of Matter’
James Milligan for ‘Calm Before the Storm’
Kitty Jamison for ‘Untiltled’
Kitty Jamison for ‘Life Force’
Mia Sutherland for ‘Your Silver’
Stephanie Lester for ‘Gazing from Rooftops’
Stephanie Lester for ‘Picnics with My Aunt’
Stephanie Lester for ‘How to Tame a Cat’
Tori Marsden for ‘Starlit’
Winifred Davis for ‘The Magic of Fire’